Chapter 94 (and a Half)
by pseudocitrus
Summary: Their love confessed in a grove of cherry blossom trees. Nanami wants to return to the Tomoe of her time — but isn't that Tomoe also this one? (Nanami/Tomoe lemon)


**notes:**

+ i'm so bad at thinking of titles

+ also kinda wrote this with the ~*flurry of happy ch. 94 passion*~ so please point out errors if you see any! i didn't read the actual chapter more than once so they're probably all over the place

+ & enjoy ^_^)

* * *

**Chapter 94.5**

"Tomoe," she said, and he strained to hear, to give her his full attention. Her voice fell on his ears with the softness of petals falling on the ground. "Take me home."

Her voice faltered; not due to the poison, he sensed, but because her tongue hesitated to form the words, because she was forcing them out. "You don't want to go home," he told her, hoping she would see it, admit it. "You want to stay with me."

"I want to go home," she insisted in a mumble, looking to the trees.

"_What_ —" His voice started furious; he took a breath, calmed before continuing. "What does your home have for you? Is it a fine place? I can make one even more beautiful for you. I'll tear these very trees from the ground for you."

"Oh no, don't..."

"Or do you have servants there?" He rubbed the sleeve of her kimono between his fingers; it didn't match the quality of his own, but it was a good one in comparison to the average human's. He tried to meet her eyes and when she kept looking steadfastly away from him, he took her cheek and tipped it gently toward him.

"I'll be your servant," he told her. "I'll do anything for you that you wish. I'll find you the finest human cooks and make them serve you whatever you desire —"

She smiled, lovely, faint. "I don't need servants, Tomoe. Much less ones that you kidnap, or something."

"Then me," he said, brightening at her lovely, faint smile. "I'll be your servant. I'll make a place for you, where you can be beside me — I'll learn how to make whatever human foods you like to eat — I will be the only one that you ever need."

He could hardly believe what he was saying, only knew that telling her that he was all-powerful, that he could bend her to his will, hadn't worked. Now he wanted to show her how well he could fulfill her wish. If nothing else he sounded completely ridiculous and he hoped at least that he would smile at him, more brightly, and he was taken aback when she looked at him with eyes wide and stricken and filled with tears.

She seemed startled as well. She sat up and a tear escaped and slid down her cheek like a convict and she caught it, damp, on the tip of her finger. She pinched it into her kimono sleeve and then hid her face, swiping and pressing the sleeves against her eyelids. She wanted to hide from him but in the darkness she could see him still: Tomoe, smiling smugly as he lifted a platter of pear tarts to her nose. Tomoe, glancing at her between floating billows of laundry. Tomoe looking up with shock at her as a black mark clawed his face. Tomoe looking down, coughing blood.

"I need to leave," she said. Her voice was stronger, but shook, the same as her body did as she stood away from him. She maneuvered her legs beneath her, approximating a walk, but the lingering poison stalled her, as did her indecision, and the warmth of Tomoe's hand reaching her skin as he stopped her, clutching the edge of her clothing.

"It's that other man, then," he said. He plucked the hair ornament from her sash and she spun around and reached for it, but he held it out of reach, snorted.

"Such a simple thing. I can give you a thousand hair ornaments, all better than this one."

"Give it back," Nanami growled, but he turned her around with a hand on her shoulder, and he gathered her hair in his hands, twisting it. He speared the ornament into it, and blinked when it didn't catch, her hair immediately untwisting. The ornament clinked to the grass and Nanami hastily collected it.

"Nice try, though," she said, amused, and Tomoe flushed.

"I'll get better at it."

She laughed suddenly. "I know you will." She considered. "You can practice it on yourself while I go home, with a twig, maybe."

"Why do you need to sort out those human things?" he snapped. "I'll bring you somewhere where none of it matters. We can live together away from them."

"As if your demon friends wouldn't find you!" she humored.

"They wouldn't. Or if they did I'd kill them. We could live like gods."

Her face twisted in that strange, stricken look again. The unhappiness of it made his stomach twist. She looked like she was going to fall and he took her by the shoulders, to steady her, and to make sure that she met his gaze. His tail lashed, becoming speckled with damp petals in the long grass. Heat frothed to his cheeks, anger and desperation.

"What's the matter with you? Didn't you say that you love me?" Something in his chest quavered. That's what she'd said, right? Maybe he'd misunderstood — maybe humans were different — maybe she didn't feel the same way he did, like something had been carved in the stone of his heart impermeably. Her existence had changed the way that the blood flowed through his body. Was it not the same for her?

She watched him, level. He was so energetic — the Tomoe that she knew would never lose his temper this fast and easily, never looked so openly frustrated, tail shaking along the ground like a child stamping his foot. He reminded her of a little puppy suddenly, a little half-grown Tomoe.

"I do love you, Tomoe," she said, and a smile stole across her face that made his ears go flat. He released her.

"You mock me," he muttered. This human woman! Laughing at him — when in an instant he could reduce her to ash — or crush her as easily as a flower between two fingers — when he had already bared his strange new heart to her — his fists clenched, holding the fire back.

"I'm not mocking you!" Nanami objected, but it was with a laugh, and he gritted his teeth and looked away.

"You are! Stupid human!"

"Tomoe," she called, and she reached for his crossed arms to unfold them, take his hands in his. She no longer felt frightened of this newer Tomoe. And strangely, she didn't feel below him either, like she did sometimes with the present Tomoe — trusting him to do things for her, to save her, to approve of her. She felt strong, somehow, and superior — glowing with the truth that she had held back and swallowed until it writhed in her chest, words that she could now let stretch out in front of her, and wrap around her straight shoulders.

"Tomoe," she said again, and though he didn't look at her she saw his ears flick toward her. "Tomoe, I love you."

"You love your human duties," he muttered, "or maybe that other man, whoever he is," and her smile hardened into a grimace. Even the child-Tomoe that she had cared for once hadn't been this petulant. She took her hands off as he continued: "If you loved me you wouldn't leave."

It was _because_ of him that she needed to leave! But she couldn't say it.

"I love you most," she told him instead. Her voice was hard and he looked at her, finally. Speaking now was like coughing up sharp stones, but letting them spill out made her feel so much lighter. "You have no idea how much I I love you. I'd do anything for you. I've loved you before you even knew me," she said, but stumbled — no, that wasn't quite true — was it? She considered. The Tomoe in the future that she had fallen in love with _had_ known her, even if he didn't know it. After all, wasn't she, Nanami, standing here right now? She hesitated. She was in such a hurry to return to Tomoe. And yet...

Wasn't Tomoe here with her already?

"Before I knew you?" he said, bewildered, and Nanami faltered.

"I mean — at the river. I loved you even then, Tomoe. Since —" She struggled, trying to think of the truth, trying to think of a lie. Since he had emerged from the mist of the hammer's blow with his hair the same way it was now, a veil of moonlight. Since he leaned forward and kissed her and bound himself to her again.

"Since we met at the cabin?" he prompted. A warmth was growing in his chest, squirming, unbearable. He willed her to say yes. For her to say that that since that day, like him, she had felt a flutter in his bones — a fury and emptiness at the hollow, boring scenery around them — that across the miles and time passed between them there had been something connecting them. She looked up at him and said it — "_Yes_" — and the hunger he felt then shook him in dizzy waves.

"Yukiji —" he started, and Nanami winced. She silenced him with a finger over his mouth. Her body did it without thinking, and her mind was again slow to catch up when her skin flared with prickling heat as Tomoe kissed her finger. In shock she watched as he took her hand gently and unfolded it, kissing her palm, her wrist, softly. Her breath caught. Tomoe was — Tomoe —

— knew exactly what spots were sensitive, even if she didn't. He held her arm outstretched, bending forward so that his kisses fluttered against her skin alongside the brush of his eyelashes, his fringe. He folded back the sleeve of her kimono and laid a last kiss on the thin patch of skin there, where it resonated through her entire body, like a tsunami. When he looked up at her with a smirk she found her breath was jagged. He straightened and Nanami saw him as if through a haze. Her heart was racing. What was happening? Was the present trying to pull her body back?

"Did you imagine that too, Yukiji?" he wondered. "When we were apart?" He leaned toward her, and almost too late Nanami reclaimed her senses and put a hand up to stop their mouths from meeting. Undeterred, he took that hand too, and kissed it, filling the creases of her palm, touching each fingertip, one, two, three, four — covering the fifth with his mouth and sucking gently. The trembles she felt grew deeper and reached the pit of her stomach.

He smiled at her, lazy, as if he knew the effect he had, though Nanami herself felt that she could hardly comprehend it. He curved a hand around her waist and pulled her close to him — she could feel the heat of his body — he curved his other hand around her cheek, nails brushing the back of her scalp, and drew her up again to meet his lips. They would be warm, and soft — and how would they feel there, if his mouth on her hands already felt so good? She wanted suddenly very much — to close her eyes and press into him, be swallowed up in her trembling, to have him, _right now_ —

"Not there," she whispered, just barely, "not on my mouth," mustering all the strength she had not just to stifle her longing but also her frustration at having to stop. He paused, hovered a moment, then bent beside her ear, his sigh raising goosebumps on her nape.

"Then where?" he whispered, and even with no contact she felt he could unravel her. He kissed her ear and she sighed and leaned into him, pleasure making her knees weak. She remembered how she had woken one night at the tengu mountain with Tomoe's weight on her and his face just brushing her throat and before she knew it her mouth was forming the words: "My neck."

"Well! How forward of you," Tomoe laughed lightly, and she flushed and started to cover her face but he anticipated her and grabbed her rising hand to kiss it again. "No, I like it. Don't you remember? I can be your perfect servant — I'll kiss any part of you that you ask. Tell me again, Yukiji-sama," he said, teasing, and though the name was like a little thorn it was like a shield too. She took the name into her mouth and swallowed it and said again, with strength she didn't know she had: "Kiss my neck, Tomoe."

"Of course," he said, and the next moment she was off her feet — she yelped a bit and tightened her grip on him but he let her down gently, the long untended grass cushioning her body, the cherry blossoms looming overhead like clouds. Tomoe was over her, holding her hands in his above her head, unfurling them so their palms lay flat against each other; he nuzzled her chin up and licked a line along her throat that made her shiver with delight. Her hands gripped with increasing tightness as he continued, laying kisses up and down the bone of her throat. Her breath grew staggered beneath his lips and when he glanced up at her face he felt intoxicated at the sight of her eyes glazing with delight. He could smell the desire coming off her like the scent of a flower unfolding for him. This was what he wanted — this was what he had been searching for so long, what he'd been missing on those long nights, the dream he hadn't realized he'd been having while gazing emptily at the ceilings of his resting places. He had been looking for this human woman, who even now was moving from his grip, sitting up with him, wrapping her arms around him with a desperateness no woman had ever held him with before, and a focus — as if he were the only thing in the world.

"I missed you," she whispered to his slanted ear, knowing he wouldn't understand how she had missed and chased him across five hundred years, how she had watched him collapsed and spirited away into a mirror. She inhaled him, the smell familiar, and delicious. He combed her hair, already speckled with cherry blossom petals, and then clutched the dark strands when she laid her mouth against his neck, just as he had, gently sucking light little circles. She started near his chin and moved millimeter by millimeter down — his tail curled — then straightened with shock as she began to peel his clothing off his left shoulder, continuing to trace her mouth across the bare flesh. She found that she liked the sound of his shaky exhalations. Roughly, clumsily, he grabbed her knees and moved them to either side of his hips. Her clothing slid high up her thighs as her legs parted and he followed the exposure, then passed it, his hands cupping her thighs, her bottom, tugging her closer toward him, before working off the shoulders of her clothing as well, both at once, until he revealed her bra.

"What's this?" he said in confusion, "some human thing?" and Nanami laughed nervously and reached back.

"Some human thing," she agreed, and unhooking it was harder than she thought, not just because she was clumsy with her trembly pleasure but because suddenly she was afraid and embarrassed to expose herself to him. Once it was unhooked she hesitated, holding it in place, until Tomoe gently lifted her hand away. Her breasts were peaked with the evening's chill and with Tomoe's touch, and as he regarded her she dropped the bra on the grass.

"They're small," she laughed with a grimace, nervous, knowing that this Tomoe was probably already friends with the tanuki women.

"Is that so," he replied, and cupped one entirely with his hand. The nipple poked out between his thumb and forefinger and he squeezed it into a peak that he moistened with the tip of his tongue, then sucked. Nanami gasped and her nails dug into his bare shoulders, tangled in his long hair. He continued with audible little slurps that made her face flare red — she was embarrassed, exhilarated. She felt bare and yet utterly covered by him. He was gentle but she was so, so sensitive that she felt his light licks were scooping out something between her ribs, a hardness, a tenseness. Soon she realized he had dispersed all the shame in her, stirred her up until all of it fell to the depths of her, and what rose in its stead was a quivering _want_ — a hunger for him that for months she forced into the center of herself, ever since he had first discovered and then denied her on the roof of the aquarium.

"Tomoe," she sighed, beautifully, and his insides jerked awake at the sound of it, like a dog perking at the sound of a beloved platter. His ardor flared — he squeezed her, harder, and dragged his teeth across her nipple, gently — her little human nails dug deeper into his shoulder blades, not with terror but with a new desperation, as if she were hanging on to a cliff's edge.

She scrabbled, fumbled, began to pull his robe out of his sash, and he released her to help her, throwing the obi aside. She pushed him to the ground, and he looked up in surprise at her sudden intensity. She did not look back at him — instead, she was looking down — one hand was on either side of his kimono, and she carefully peeled back each, revealing his chest, his belly. He swallowed, licked his lips like a cornered creature, abruptly uneasy. He had thought that she was new to all this — and maybe she was, but the desire he saw in her eyes wasn't the cautious and half-terrified desire that he expected to cajole into full fruition. It smoldered like a long-tended fire that had subsisted on ashes. As she uncovered him fully he expected her to wince away — he _wanted_ her to look away, for the sake of his own appearance of expertise — but instead the fire in her brightened, inhaling the sight of him like fuel.

What was with this human woman? His heart raced. Suddenly _he_ felt like the new one, aware of his nakedness, the unnatural movements of his body. "Uncovering a demon like this," he murmured, chuckling apprehensively. "What a human you are, Yukiji."

"Yukiji," she repeated, and placed a soft, soft hand on his hard shaft — he gasped and felt that he swelled even more beneath her, her grip that started tentative and then became firm, a collar and a leash. "Is this okay with you, then? For me to be a human, and you a demon?"

As she spoke the wind rustled the boughs above them and blossoms fell, crowning her sparsely in petals. Was she really just a human? He struggled for words as she stroked him, but every time he found them and opened his mouth the words crumbled into a moan.

"It should be...okay," he managed finally, struggling for breath. He felt her like a river washing over him, and every word and breath was a struggle. She loosened her hand to hear him and he smiled at her and reached forward, beneath her askew clothing, rubbing his thumb between her legs — accurately, he could tell, by her widened eyes, by the way her thighs squeezed him. She leaned forward into him.

"It should be okay," he repeated. His hand moved beneath her and he smirked to find her wet. "Humans and demons aren't so different, are they?"

"And humans aren't so different from one another, are they? Any human might do for you," she said, her voice low, and Tomoe knew what she wanted to hear, and said it, truthfully.

"No," he said, his voice tender. "Only you, Yukiji." He raised a hand to her cheek, and she held it there. She tilted her face into his palm, closed her eyes.

"Only _me_," she said, and looked back to him. Her eyes captured him. "Remember _me_," she whispered, pleading, biting her lip, and his brows furrowed in confusion, but before he could raise questions she slid across him — his heart lunged into his throat — she rested her body directly over his shaft, and he groaned with the warmth of her, and so soft, so soft — he sat up and kissed her neck again, nipped it, suffused with urgency, his hands moving with hers to position him, tearing what clothing remained between them with a well-placed claw, helping her up, and then (their eyes fixed on each other's, their faces flushed) down. His hand was on her back and he felt her shudder as he entered her in easy, slick centimeters. Filling her was exquisite — it felt like new — she pulsed around him, but he was aware of her body too, her pants blowing his hair, her teeth grazing his brow. He kissed her ear and at her moan he felt like he wanted to melt into her, be a single thing with her forever.

He tried to move but couldn't manage the leverage, so he put his arms around her waist and pushed her up, slightly, suggesting — whispered, "_Please_" — and she lifted her body, breathing heavily, eyes closed to feel the length of him again before letting herself fall again, heavily. He only needed to ask once — then she continued on her own, eyes still shut, back and neck arched as she used him, piercing herself over and over and deeper. She braced her hands on his belly and he watched her greedily as she used him, wanted him.

Every motion pierced her so deeply — she felt the friction of him ache and yawn deliciously across her body. She moved hungrily but rather than feeling full, she felt tighter — like he was twisting up all her muscles and veins, like she was becoming a knot of a thing entangled with him. And at the center of the knot, a hungry, hot core — she plunged him into her again and again, trying to reach it, frantic — her gripping fingernails left crescents on his stomach — his ears reverberated with the sound of her passion. She felt all wrapped around him, and about to snap.

He felt her growing tense as a cord — he waited for her to pause, and the moment she did, wrapped her up in his arms.

"Tomoe," she gasped, and suddenly the tangled-up nerves in her body all tightened and snapped at once in little bursts of flame — she cried out when she came, feeling like she might shatter with ferocity of it, and his grip on her tightened as he came as well, clutching her to him as he filled her with warmth.

They fell back to earth slowly, reclaiming their stolen breath. Tomoe buried his nose in Nanami's hair and inhaled, the fragrance filled with a sweetness that settled into his marrow. Hair and petals were plastered with sweat onto their skin. The boughs dance beautifully overhead, veiling them with more, the stars glistening like jewels. His heart only felt like it was racing faster. She fit perfectly against him — she fit perfectly with him — she was perfect, perfect. He wanted her by his side forever, to smile at him, to call him with her voice brimming with happiness.

Her breaths were heavy, but suddenly became lighter, and harsh; she began to cough, body quaking, and he held her tightly, swallowing as the evening suddenly seemed colder, and the evening dark, and the trees' rustling like the flapping of vultures.

"Yukiji?"

"I'm fine," she said, spending what breath she had for the words and struggling to suck it back in again. She was exhausted; her adrenaline had faded and now she realized how far her energy had dwindled without her realizing it. Tomoe clutched her and she patted his back comfortingly.

"I'm fine, Tomoe, don't worry," she said, and her voice had the brightness like the glow of a firefly near dawn. She looked up to smile at him and he smiled back, weakly; then his eyes shifted to beside her ear. He retrieved something from there, plucking it from her hair with his claws: a full cherry blossom, entangled by chance.

"Wow," Nanami said with delight, "how lucky."

"Yeah," he muttered, forcing a smile for her. He turned the blossom around in his hands. It had been shed still whole and perfect and sweet-smelling, and was already bruised by his touch. Sensing he was pensive, Nanami nudged him, then settled into the curve of his neck, perfect.

"Humans and demons aren't so different, huh? We both can love something as simple as cherry blossoms," she murmured.

"Yeah," Tomoe said back quietly. A demon loving cherry blossoms. A demon in love with a cherry blossom. There was a time when the very idea might have made him laugh.


End file.
